


See How Bright We Shine

by thelilacfield



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 09:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13678920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: Marks and scars on him like there are on her.Both of them made anew by Strucker.She is the Scarlet Witch. And he is Vision.





	See How Bright We Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VisionOfScarlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VisionOfScarlet/gifts).



**A/N:**  Written for the ScarletVision Valentine’s Day Event 2018. Based on the prompt ‘AU in which Vision (a young man kidnapped from England) was one of Strucker’s experiments back in Sokovia along with Wanda and Pietro. Pietro doesn’t survive the experiments but Wanda and Vision do. Because of that Wanda latches onto Vision instead of Pietro, her cell neighbor, and forms a mental bond with him’.

Title from  _As Long As You’re Mine_  from Wicked.

* * *

No one likes to imagine themselves dying in a way that isn't warm in bed, after living a long and satisfying life, surrounded by loved ones. Everyone thinks that one day, in fifty or sixty or seventy years, they'll simply know that their time has come, and will reflect silently and tenderly on the most beautiful moments of their life, highlighted bright and blindingly joyful in their memory, before passing peacefully with the knowledge that they will be remembered by those who love them. The ones they leave behind will grieve, but it will be beautiful, and lead to that moment at which they realise they cannot live their lives in sadness but must move on. A grave will be engraved and perfectly maintained, always polished and neat and laid with flowers so the dead will always be remembered. In memory, no one is ever truly dead.

Grief isn't like that. The reality is screaming and crying and red lashing in bright sparks around her fingers, growing into a bubble that envelopes her whole body, tears blurring her vision but the still, prone body of her brother still already engraved on her memory. He looks peaceful, dark hair spilling over his ashen face, eyes fallen closed. But he's not breathing, and she can feel him gone, half of her missing as one of Strucker's assistants cautiously opens the door, ready to take him away, just another disappointment.

Strapped down to the table, she can only watch this stranger approach her brother, circling their gloved fingers around his wrist, then pressing two beneath his jaw and giving a shake of their head. "Subject 42 did not survive the procedure," they say, cold and clinical, and begin to loosen the straps.

"You killed him," she whispers, the first time she's spoken in hours, and her voice is a broken whisper, her throat rough from screaming and the experiments, her chest hollow with the pain of surviving what her brother couldn't.

"You both knew the risks," they say, so matter-of-fact, ignorant of the fact that they've just torn her world from her. "Subject 42 will be given a burial with all the others who didn't make it."

"He has a name!" she screams, and the eyes of this person daring to touch her brother blow wide when the straps pinning her down snap and the room glows red, her body burning with this new power. "His name is Pietro Django Maximoff, and you killed him! You killed my brother! You let him die!"

"Calm down, Subject 43," they say, and an almost inhuman screech of anger spirals from her throat, and with a flick of her hand red grabs at them and they fly across the room, crashing into the wall with a sickening crunch and sliding into a heap on the ground.

"You killed him!" she screams again, and shoots a jet of red at the blacked-out window, revealing Strucker and his team, watching her with fear in their eyes. "You killed him! You killed him!" It becomes a chant, as she raises her hands and scarlet energy spirals through the room, knocking the group to the ground, tossing them around their tiny room like ragdolls.

Suddenly an arm is around her throat, pressing hard enough to stop her screaming, a whisper of cold metal against her temple. "Don't destroy her!" Strucker shouts all of a sudden. "Don't shoot our only survivor!"

"Let me join my brother," she spits, the taste of metal in her mouth, and Strucker shakes his head.

"I'm afraid, Ms. Maximoff, you are far too important to see dead," he says. "Tranq her and lock her up."

When the needle pierces her neck, she can only be grateful that the unconsciousness she's granted is dreamless and numb.

* * *

The world is without colour. She is monochrome, white skin and dark hair, clothes grey and ragged, eyes dull. The only colour she has is the red that sparks over her fingertips, reflected in her wide eyes, dancing to the rhythms of her crumbling mind. Though her shattered heart beats on and on in her chest, steady and strong beneath her thin fingers, she is hollow. The sense of self fades away in the interchangeable days, grey walls keeping her penned in a castle where no one will hear her scream or care to listen. She is alone.

Her thoughts spiral, black and white and red, thinking of blood staining the floors where she took her first uncertain steps, of the hands in the street that grabbed at her, of her brother's comfort, the ever-present gentle gaze on her and his blazing warmth curled around her at night. Chasing away the winter that curls malevolently in her chest, turning her to ice, breaking her all to pieces. Without the other half of her, she is incomplete, empty. A shadow of a person, no more than a ghost, locked alone in her cell and observed by scientists whose faces swim beyond the glass.

A voice that sounds like Pietro's urges her to run, to escape. But she can't. Trapped in her body like she is in the castle, only the power in her surging to show she's alive at all, staring at the walls, growing thinner and paler and lonelier. Hearing the whispers, the sounds of the castle, the wind at the windows and the scurrying of misty creatures in the dark. She is alone, and no one hears her crying.

Strucker and his people forget the atrocity they committed against her. They move on, the way they have from every person who died during their experiments, and push forward with their work. Men in black drag her from her cell, guns gleaming dark and dangerous at their hips should she even think of trying to run or refusing to dance like a puppet on their strings, and force her into training. Strucker watches her with a steady gaze as she moves with her powers, the way she ebbs and flows with the scarlet magic like the kind of slow dance she's never experienced. In the late nights, she watches the red flickering over her fingers, glowing in the murky darkness, and some of her strength comes back to her bones. She has power. Power that can be exerted over other people.

Strucker seems to see it. As her control over her powers grows, and she can force the red to coalesce into darts of energy aimed at the target set up for her in the carefully closed off room where they're training her, her telepathy begins to creep on her. Flickers of voices at the back of her mind, and the vaguest shadows of people's fears. She can see that with every passing day their fear of her grows, the guards twitching when she dares to make eye contact with them, their hands permanently on their guns, their faces paling whenever she sends something flying across the room or sparking bright with magic. Their fear makes her powerful, giving her something to use to her advantage, to play with them like the toys of her childhood. Cloaking herself in scarlet and mystery hides who she was before. She's slowly forcing herself to forget who she was, detach herself from the pain of a lost past. Some days she doesn't know who she is. Wanda Maximoff is gone.

More test subjects come to the castle. Their minds brush overs her, men and women of all ages, people with nothing in the world but the hope that Strucker is telling the truth and his experiments will make them stronger. Dying minds, miserable minds, hopeless minds. She watches them walk into the castle, and she senses them dim and darken with the experiments that no one but her has survived. Whatever drive inside her that made her live has long since drained from her body. All she knows is exhaustion, and misery, and loneliness. The three cornerstones of an unravelling mind.

She wakes on the cold stone floor on her cell, the fading image of her brother's face in the peaceful repose of death making her shiver for reasons more than the draughts that blow through the entire castle, to shouting around her. Telepathy amplifies the arguing, allowing her to gain impressions of the anger in both parties, and a strange mind among them, almost too peaceful to be real.

"Sir, if I may, this is ridiculous! Kidnapping from Sokovia is one thing, but to bring someone from  _England_ -"

"I hope you're not insulting me."

"Of course not, sir, but this man is too far gone, you must know that! We can't save someone this close to death!"

"The cradle can."

"Wolfgang, that cradle is experimental technology! You can't expect to understand it!"

"No, Doctor, I can expect you to understand it. Retrieve the sceptre and the cradle, we begin work on subject 54 tonight."

Creeping out the dusty shadows of her cell, leaning against the screen that allows scientists to peer at her through every hour of the day, she sees Strucker and List with one of the soldiers and a stretcher. Whoever the unfortunate new pet project of Strucker is lies beneath a white sheet, but as she watches an arm falls almost gracefully from beneath the sheet, and she stares at the hand revealed. A man's hand, long-fingered, and for a moment her own fingers twitch, aching for human contact, for the warmth she can't remember. The cold of the castle has become a part of her, and she needs someone to set the fire aglow again.

A guard crashes their baton against her screen, sending her jerking back into the darkness like a frightened cat, and snarls, "Back to sleep!" at her. Aching with emptiness, she curls up and links her hands together, imagining a ghostly warmth curled up against her back, saving her from the winter in her blood.

She's woken abruptly before dawn by the earth-shattering screaming of someone new being experimented on. And she aches to help. For the first time since she saw her brother lying dead, the numbness dissolves in the face of rage against Strucker for hurting people. A sympathetic twinge to make the slightest warmth creep into her chest. As the screaming spirals on, echoing against the stone and concrete, she watches the strange mind, aglow with a goodness she hasn't seen in so long. And something in her reaches out for this stranger, imagining holding his hand.

His is the only mind in the castle that isn't dark and malevolent. And she clings to that glow of a reminder that there is good in the world.

* * *

She dreams of a past that isn't hers. Screaming and the screech of brakes and the oddly soft sound of glass hitting the ground. Of a pain that doesn't belong to her, a cloying agony against arms and legs, a hand much larger than her own turned to a vivid crimson with blood. Of red and blue flickering in a fading reality, and then nothing but black. And pain. Always the pain.

No guard startles her from sleep with harsh voice or the clatter of a baton against the screen that cages her like some kind of animal - or weapon - and so the sun is high in the sky before she wakes, shining pale through the window that hangs tantalisingly in the wall opposite her cell. Left quiet and to herself, she watches the dust motes dancing on the sunbeams, drifting through the heavy air of the castle. As she stares, she feels the power within her take shape, rising from her bones to flicker scarlet over her skin, and the motes start to move with her whims. Dancing around each other like she used to watch her parents do on the threadbare carpet in their living room, the waltz of lovers, spiralling out into the walls. She hopes that they can find an escape that she doesn't have the will to attempt.

The castle is eerily silent, after the screaming of the hours before dawn, the shouting and the rush of running feet. Straightening up from the thin mattress they deigned to give her, the sheets threadbare and dusty, she curls herself up in a ball on the cold concrete floor, and closes her eyes, casting her mind out over the boundaries of the castle. Her consciousness brushes past guards and medical staff, blurring their thoughts into whispers of radio static, until she comes upon the peaceful glow of goodness she felt when Strucker's newest victim was carted into the castle. Not faded, but brighter than ever.

Someone else survived. She can read him, the dreams of a mind somehow at peace, bright and blooming like the flowers of summer in the window-box that once occupied the apartment she lived in with her family. In his dreams there is sunlight, and quiet, and birdsong, and the breeze lifting the air sweetly. It reminds how long it's been since she saw blue sky, or drifting clouds, or the stars winking down at her. The last time the wind touched her skin was months ago, before they walked willingly to the shadows of Strucker's castle. Before she made a decision that tore everything from her and painted her in regret for the rest of her days.

In her mind, lost in the castle, she imagines who this man might be. Strong enough to survive the experiments, to come into Strucker's hands and escape his clutches alive. But weak, too. Weak like she is. Weak enough to step into the shadows and offer his life out like an apple ripe for the picking. If she had been stronger, if the life on the streets hadn't weakened her and made her desperate, Pietro would still be alive.

The passing of time is only marked by the different minds that brush against hers, passing through the castle, until she hears footsteps, shouting, and the familiar dull sound of the guards hitting someone with their batons. Creeping cautiously of the shadows, the light against her face harsh, she presses a hand to the screen of her cell, staring as the door into the room swings violently open and the rough yelling of the guards makes her start, trembling as she claps her hands to her ears to try and keep them out.

She startles away from the screen at the softly glowing familiarity of the mind that brushes against hers, belonging to the man dragged between two shoulders, head fallen forward, apparently unconscious. One of the guards, the broader one with a streak of white in his dark beard, the one that always frightens her with the intensity of the gaze from his oddly pale eyes, pulls harshly at the stranger, dragging his limp body forward a few more steps.

"This better be as worth it as Strucker seems to think," he grumbles, gesturing to another guard to unlock the cell next to Wanda's. "Why did you have to knock the fucker out? He's heavy!"

"Strucker said we could do whatever we want as long as we don't permanently damage the test subjects," comes another gruff voice, and Wanda shrinks back in her cell, trying to get out of their sight. "Throw him in there. We've got another group of volunteers for the slaughter."

Their dark laughter echoes in the air long after the door has crashed closed behind them, and Wanda slinks to the wall, with its bricks missing, to look in on the unconscious body, slumped over on itself. The second survivor, now thrown into a cell. Just like her.

He's mostly covered in clothes like hers, the uniform of a prisoner. But something is different about him. His face gleams even in the low light, the room dim. What little sunlight manages to filter through the dust to reach the cells shows her red beneath the dirty blue of the clothes Strucker gave him, and the longer she looks the more she notices that he is not quite human. His skin is red, plated in patterns of blue-green metal, and a soft yellow glow - not dissimilar to that of his mind - lights the ground beneath where his head rests.

Twisting her fingers to conjure a glowing pinprick of red from nowhere, she scrutinises him. Eyes closed, chest rising and falling in steady breathing, mouth soft and relaxed. Peaceful in unconsciousness.

Somehow, beautiful.

* * *

She sits in silence, staring at the wall, red playing across her skin. As her fingers move, gentle motions in the quiet air, the glowing lines of red coalesce into a shadow with a vague similarity to Pietro, the same sweep of hair and the best representation she can remember of the way he looked at her, so concerned and gentle. His voice is starting to fade from her broken memory, becoming just another part of her past. Like her parents.

Alone in her cell, staring at lines of glowing red that form a pale imitation of the last person she had left in the world, her mind begins to wander. To crack at the edges. Parts of herself falling away into the abyss, ruining her from the inside out, destroying every trace of her. She isn't who she used to be. She doesn't know who she will be. All she is is a power too great to be controlled by a lonely, unravelling mind.

Brightness breaks into her consciousness, chasing away the misty darkness that clings to every part of her. The shadowy, glowing illusion of Pietro fades away into the gloom as she turns her head and peers into the cell next to hers, seeing her single fellow survivor shifting from sleep, lifting his head and blinking very blue eyes up at her.

Neither of them speaks. But the usual silence that rules over the castle no longer seems oppressive, made by the darkness and the dust. But almost comforting. Like the moments before the sunrise when she had someone to worry if she didn't wake up or move from her mattress all day, the quiet of contentment. She feels content looking into the eyes of a stranger, wide and worried and so perfectly blue. Flawless. Like paint on the walls of the bathroom in the apartment of her childhood, the blue of a summer sky.

With the glow of his mind brushing insistently against hers, she reaches out, embraces his consciousness as it melts into hers. And she sees him. The first time she's been completely aware of the strength of her telepathy as well as her telekinesis. His dreams, his fears, his past, his present, the future he hopes for - everything becomes hers to know.

And she sees his name. The name Strucker gave him, standing over that terrible cradle while the stolen technology worked to create new skin from nothing, forming what he has become, this body that isn't human, the places even the greatest health technology in the world couldn't repair covered by metal, ugly knots of scar tissue disguised by colour. Strucker's stone gleaming in his forehead, the yellow glow forever twisting, brightening and dimming by turns with every passing second. Marks and scars on him like there are on her. Both of them made anew by Strucker.

She is the Scarlet Witch. And he is Vision.

* * *

Her strength returns to her minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. With Vision's mind to reach out for, the same way she would take Pietro's hand at the blackest hour of the night when fear made her cold and she wasn't sure if she could live to see another sunrise, she finds warmth again. Melting away the darkness with the glowing goodness of his mind, chasing away the winter that froze her soul. Bringing her back from the brink.

Neither of them sleep much. Vision doesn't seem to need to, always quiet and still in his cell, only the bright gleam of his eyes as the changing light of the Sokovia sky flickers over him showing him to be more than a statue. When night falls and the sound of footsteps and the frantic activity of minds in the castle calms, they sit in peaceful silence and speak. Not out loud. She still hasn't heard his voice, the thick screen between their cells preventing her from doing so. But through telepathy, she can learn everything about him.

He remembers his life before far better than she does, her mind knitting back together after being so painfully fragmented by her brother's death. Over quiet nights, she learns that he's from England, where he lived an unassuming life. He didn't volunteer. Strucker found him close to death in a hospital bed after an excruciating car accident, and kidnapped him to use as a pawn in his games with the cradle he stole from an experimental genetics lab in Korea.

Curled up against the screen between their cells, gazing at the way he casts his eyes down when he talks about his past, the beautiful light of his mind despite his sadness making her heart beat a little faster, she gives him a soft reassuring smile. It's been so long since her lips curved like that, since she felt the lift lend a sparkle to her eyes, felt the warmth in her chest like that. There's been no reason to be happy for months.

She asks him if anyone misses him. And he shakes his head. No next of kin on his forms. Family and friends haven't been a part of his life. Strucker chose him because no one would care if he disappeared.

A promise to him, pushed into his mind with all the force she can muster. That she would care if he disappeared. How she can't bear to think of losing him. In the shortest space of time, his eyes have become familiar. His mind keeps her calm. He chases the darkness out of her mind, cleanses the sadness from her soul.

So slowly, his face splits into a smile, and her breath catches in the prison of her chest at how handsome he is. His eyes bright with happiness, gazing into hers without faltering. The way he looks at her makes her chest feel tight and a flush rise in her cheeks, and a smile unfurls helplessly across her lips.

He plants his hand flat against the screen separating them, and she does the same. His fingers are longer than hers, his hand so much bigger, and if she closes her eyes and imagines she can almost feel his hand clasping around hers. Warm and gentle and reassuring.

She wants to know what it would actually be like to take his hand. To feel his warmth instead of just imagine it. To be with him.

* * *

Whispers rise from the criminal underworld Strucker has made his bed in. The Avengers are looking for the sceptre he used in his experiments, and are growing closer to successfully finding his lair. People are growing nervous, knowing the Earth's mightiest heroes are coming for them. So much of her vengeful hatred for them died with the bright fire of Pietro's anger, freezing into nothing more than exhaustion. But the thought that they are coming to this castle that made her so miserable doesn't make her hate them. She's clearly a prisoner, in her uniform greyed by dust and a cell keeping her confined. They can free her.

Vision has no bias against the Avengers like she does. He freely tells her that he'll be delighted to see them, to meet the great heroes that saved the world from an alien invasion, to have them save him from Strucker's clutches. The way he lights up when he reflects on the Avengers, each of their famous faces, makes her smile softly to herself, affection for him a comforting warmth in her chest.

But Strucker won't give up without a fight. He's not the surrendering type. Instead he calls in more soldiers, boys not yet finished growing into men, teaches them to hold a gun and a knife and defend the castle or die trying. Their pale faces and scared eyes remind her of Pietro, putting steel in her heart. Before she runs, she will make Strucker pay for what he took from her.

Strucker isn't just calling on the boys of the country to defend his castle. He's calling on his experiments, his miracles, his soldiers. His guards drag her from her cell and force her back into the training she doesn't want to be a part of, making her prove what she can do. Darts of red moving around her hands, aiming for the targets they erect for her, each one landing true on its mark, the satisfaction in Strucker's smile making her skin crawl.

Vision is even more reluctant than her to go to assessment. From what she knows of him - and it feels like so much, even for the short time they've known each other, she feels a connection with him more strongly than she ever has with anyone but her family, her  _blood_  - he's gentle and kind and has no desire to hurt people. Least of all the Avengers, heroes to him. But the soldiers force him to his feet, laugh when he stumbles on the rough stone floors, and she watches from behind the screens of her cell, those awful guard with their jeering voices and hands poised to grab their batons being so close to Vision making her heartbeat jump with nervousness.

They try to make him show them his powers. Power even she can't understand the depths of, so much knowledge contained in the stone that has made the man she knows, the man she feels something so warm and wonderful for, swelling in her chest and keeping the nightmares at bay. But no matter what the threats are, colourful English and Sokovian and German, Vision remains still, refusing to raise his hands, the light of the mind stone glowing peacefully.

A scream wrenches from Wanda's lips when one of the soldiers raises their baton and lands a vicious hit across the back of Vision's head, sending him sprawling forwards. They hit him, even as he curls himself tight against their violence, their bloodlust, and she's screaming the way she did when she saw Pietro dead in front of her, eyes burning with unshed tears.

"Stop it!  _Stop it_ , you're hurting him!"

Dark eyes look at her above a mouth twisted with contempt, and one of the soldiers spit on the ground inches from Vision's face, his handsome face screwed up in pain, his eyes tightly closed against reality. "What are you going to do, witch?" a soldier asks her, the taller one, baton glinting threateningly in his hand.

"Leave him  _alone_!" A smack of her hands against the screen, ineffectual, and the soldier barks out a laugh. "He doesn't want to fight, can't you see that? Let him  _go_!"

"You can't stop us," the soldier says, lip curling. "Stay in your cell, coward. Go cry some more over your dead brother."

Her world flashes red for a split second, and all of her incomprehensible power comes rushing to the surface, her hands rising from her sides and jets of red shooting out in every direction. The screen parting her from Vision shatters into a thousand pieces, tiny lethal shards of glass hanging like a stormcloud in the air. For a moment, she sees fear in the eyes of the soldiers, and they raise their arms to shield themselves a moment too late.

Their screams of agony at the glass burying itself in their flesh fill the air, echoing around the castle, and she hears footsteps above them, reinforcements running to join their little party. A flicker of her fingers slams every door shut and slides the heavy bolts into place, closing them all off.

One soldier is whimpering, trying to prise shards of glass out of his arms. The other, the one who spoke to her so cruelly and hit Vision first, is staring at her, eyes huge and round with terror. "Please," he whispers, the voice of a child. The child she used to be, before everything was ripped away from her. "Please let us go. Have mercy."

"Did you give me mercy?" she hisses, surprised herself at how cruel her voice can sound, anger crackling like electricity across her skin, red mist spiking and lashing out, wrapping around the soldier's wrists and pulling him towards her. "Did you give  _him_  mercy?"

"Your brother died in the experiments!" the soldier shouts, turning to a yelp of pain when the bonds she has around his wrists tighten, cutting off the circulation to his hands. "His heart gave out! It wasn't our fault!"

"Not my brother," she hisses, and the soldier gives himself away with a glance at Vision, still curled on the ground with his eyes closed, breathing ragged with pain. "You're not going to hurt anyone else ever again."

"I won't," the soldier says, eyes pleading for her to stop, so afraid. The way Pietro looked the last time she saw him alive.

"I'll make sure of it," she whispers, and clenches her hand into a tight fist, relishing in the screaming as she shatters the two minds waiting for her vengeance.

When silence reigns, and the two soldiers are left slumped unconscious and ashen on the stones, she falls to her knees at Vision's side, reaching for his hand. Untangling his fingers from their clenched fist, revelling in the smooth warmth of his skin, her face growing flushed. "Vision," she whispers, and he turns his head and meets her eyes, and without the screen between them the held gaze is overwhelming.

"What did you do?" he asks, and his voice makes her heart skip, soft and sweet and warm, her blush growing brighter.

"I had to," she says, helping him to sit up through his wincing, anger lashing through her again when she sees the smears of polish from the batons on his clothes, the places where they hurt him. "They were hurting you. I couldn't let them. I couldn't stand by and watch. Not when...not after you saved me."

"I didn't do anything," he says softly, ashamed, and she leans towards him as if drawn by a magnet, cupping a hand to his cheek, running her thumb over a line of metal plating, his eyes finding hers, desire flickering in their depths.

"You saved me," she repeats, so quiet, her gaze flickering between his eyes and his lips. "You made me believe I wasn't alone. I...I would've let myself die if it hadn't been for you." Their breath mingles in the air, shallow and nervous, and when he shifts ever so slightly she breaks through the layers of tension and presses her lips to his.

He goes still for a moment, just long enough for regret to twinge in her heart, but then he kisses her back, and her heart sings. His arms slide around her, his hands resting over the small of her back, and hers wrap around his neck, a hand curving around the back of his head to pull him closer. The world narrows to just them, and his arms feel like home, a sigh of contentment leaving her lips when his mouth opens against hers.

The kiss comes to a natural end, and she presses a last gentle peck to his lips before pulling away completely, opening her eyes to watch him. How peaceful he looks. And happy. His eyes bright when he opens them and looks at her, smiling and tracing a thumb along the sharpness of her cheekbone. "You are wonderful, Wanda Maximoff," he breathes, and she wants him to always speak to her like that. Like there's so much between them, and nothing can break it.

A second kiss is stopped before it can begin by the wail of an alarm, the rattle of a gunfire, and the distant thunking of helicopter blades. "The Avengers!" someone bellows in a distant room, and Wanda's blood runs cold. "They're here!"

"We have to move," she says, and staggers to her feet, Vision steadying her, an anchor as he stands beside her. She unlocks the door with a wave of her hand, and drags him away from the sound of footsteps, though with the echoes they seem to be all around them.

A soldier rounds the corner in front of them, but before he can even shout a warning Vision moves faster than Wanda can see and knocks him against the wall, holding out a hand to her as the body slides to the floor in a crumpled heap. "Run," he says, and she tries to keep up with his pace, forcing muscles to move the way they haven't in a long time, her thighs burning as they round corners and race up stairs.

"Hey!" comes a bellow, and she catches a glimpse of an arrow arcing through the air, and instinctively raises her hand to protect herself. Red turns the arrow to dust, and she looks up to an Avenger staring her in the face, Hawkeye himself slack-jawed in awe. "How did you-"

"Barton!" comes another yell, and Wanda tugs Vision around another corner, ducking into an empty room and trying to disappear. Flashes of conversation drift towards her, and she hears, "Two enhanced...need to get them...don't know who they're loyal to...the sceptre...Romanoff, with me."

"We need to get out of here," she whispers, clutching Vision's hand tightly, an anchor in the chaos. "Maybe...maybe we should surrender. They might be kind if we do."

"Do you trust me?" Vision asks softly, and she nods. "Blow out the wall."

She raises her hand, closes her eyes, and there's a crash as the wall falls away, bricks tumbling into the castle grounds. Standing up, jerking her to her feet, Vision lifts her into his arms, and she clutches tightly at his prisoner uniform as he rises from the ground, jaw gritted in concentration, steering them out of the castle and into the air.

"You can fly," she whispers, and he meets her eyes and gives her a slight smile. "We can be free."

"You want to stay with me?" he asks softly, doubt dark in his eyes, and she lifts her head against the rush of the wind to kiss his cheek.

"I don't want anything except you," she says, and he smiles. Pauses in getting them out of range of the sound of gunfire. Keeps them afloat as he bows his head and presses his lips to hers.

It feels like magic.

 


End file.
